book review: 'how to mellify a corpse: and other human stories of ancient science & superstition

“… To limn a culture, history should attempt to capture the human
stories, to squeeze the meaning from cascades of events instead of one
thing in isolation. Rather than focus on the elite figures, I tend to
stare a the messy, muddy, exhilarating, exasperating mass of humanity of
long ago … To give you the true flavor of those times, I've salted this whole brew
with little-known facts, Herodotean digressions, and absurdities, once
firmly believed yet so outrageous that I could not have made them up.
It's an iconoclastic mix, yeasty with names and deeds and beliefs you
won't have heard much about. Meteorite worship; bean taboos; bizarre
beliefs about women and their powers over hydrocarbons; it's all here."

Be ready for a lot of astounding facts! Readers who liked Working IX to V: Orgy Planners, Funeral Clowns and Other Prized Professions of the Ancient World
will love this book. The stories take you from Athens & Attica to
Greece & the Greek Islands to Asia Minor & the Middle East to
Rome & Environs, and thereafter to Italy & Sicily and Egypt,
Carthage & North Africa – from about 700 BC to 300 AD. They cover
the range of physical science, then considered a “philosophy,” medicine,
architecture, time keeping, astronomy, astrology & superstition,
divination, religion … you name it.

A random opening of a page gets you to the chapter “Philosophical
Fava Phobia” and, surprisingly to the unaware reader, to Pythagoras. The
accompanying drawing is titled Decoding the Great Bean Taboo (and much else) of Pythagoras.

“… To limn a culture, history should attempt to capture the human
stories, to squeeze the meaning from cascades of events instead of one
thing in isolation. Rather than focus on the elite figures, I tend to
stare a the messy, muddy, exhilarating, exasperating mass of humanity of
long ago … To give you the true flavor of those times, I've salted this whole brew
with little-known facts, Herodotean digressions, and absurdities, once
firmly believed yet so outrageous that I could not have made them up.
It's an iconoclastic mix, yeasty with names and deeds and beliefs you
won't have heard much about. Meteorite worship; bean taboos; bizarre
beliefs about women and their powers over hydrocarbons; it's all here."

Be ready for a lot of astounding facts! Readers who liked Working IX to V: Orgy Planners, Funeral Clowns and Other Prized Professions of the Ancient World
will love this book. The stories take you from Athens & Attica to
Greece & the Greek Islands to Asia Minor & the Middle East to
Rome & Environs, and thereafter to Italy & Sicily and Egypt,
Carthage & North Africa – from about 700 BC to 300 AD. They cover
the range of physical science, then considered a “philosophy,” medicine,
architecture, time keeping, astronomy, astrology & superstition,
divination, religion … you name it.

A random opening of a page gets you to the chapter “Philosophical
Fava Phobia” and, surprisingly to the unaware reader, to Pythagoras. The
accompanying drawing is titled Decoding the Great Bean Taboo (and much else) of Pythagoras.